The Gender Debate: A Marxist Feminist Perspective

This article is written in response to an article entitled ‘Are All Marxist Feminists TERFs?’. The article can be found here.

The author of the above article argues that Marxist feminists (or ‘Red TERFs’) deny the ‘actual lived experiences’ of transwomen. Not only is this ironic as trans activists regularly dismiss women’s extensive lived experiences of male violence and patriarchal oppression, but it is a wholly untrue and unfair accusation. Criticism of gender has been integral to feminist criticism for centuries and feminists have continually outlined the oppression faced by those who do not conform to gender — particularly lesbians. Transwomen are males who do not conform to traditional masculinity and so often face abuse and even violence as a result of this gender nonconformity. Marxists feminists (and other women who are slurred as ‘TERFs’) do not deny that gender non-conforming males face oppression but we vehemently disagree with…